MAN LOST MORE THAN LAND TO SCHOOL BOARD

But what hurts more than anything, he said, is that it was all for nothing. All the money, all the time, all the emotion.

"Wasted," he said.

Viele and his family were the last holdouts in downtown Fort Lauderdale, fighting the Broward School Board to the bitter end to try to keep their property on Brickell Avenue.

The School Board decided almost five years ago that it needed the Viele family's downtown holdings -- home of Tibbett's Jewelers on the corner of Southwest First Avenue -- to build a parking lot for its planned $17.7 million high-rise administration building.

The Vieles battled all the way to the Florida Supreme Court to try to keep the school system from taking the parcel, which was purchased during World War II. But they lost. The land slipped into the ownership of the school system.

But now that the School Board owns the property, it doesn't want it anymore.

School Board members officially decided this week to give up on the plan to build downtown. After the investment of five years and $5.5 million, they decided to stay in their location on Southwest Fourth Street.

The Viele property cost the board $239,535, including interest. Attorneys' fees have not been set.

"I can't even describe to you the empty feeling, the disgust with the School Board over the way this thing was handled," said Dwight Viele, whose pioneering parents bought the building that served as Fort Lauderdale's first bus station.

The former owners of the downtown property can't have their land back. By state law, it must either be sold to a government agency or be declared surplus and sold to the highest bidder.

"It's a shame, the waste -- and I underline waste -- of the taxpayers' money," Viele said. "They wasted millions of dollars, took our property and now that they have settled with us, they wake up to the fact that they made a mistake.

"It's just another example of government not knowing what they are doing."

The School Board might have begun building its administrative center on the site years ago, had it not been for troubles with Fort Lauderdale city officials, who suddenly decided they wanted to preserve the Brickell Avenue buildings for historical reasons.

Recent estimates have shown that in the years since the board approved the building, its projected cost swelled by about $5 million.

Board member Neil Sterling, a downtown merchant and one of the original supporters of the downtown administrative center, said the project just didn't make sense any more.

"We have to be more aware of the economics of the situation than before," said Sterling, who pointed out that the cost of the parking garage alone for the downtown center would have been the same as the cost of a new elementary school.

School Board members have already instructed administrators to begin looking for ways to recoup as much money as possible on the downtown property.

"We ended up with a white elephant that hopefully we can get our money back in three to five years," said board member Lori Parrish.

No one is happier than V.J. Tibbetts that the School Board won't be moving into the downtown.

"Can you imagine, 850 paper shufflers from the School Board sitting there?" asked Tibbetts, who ran the jewelry store in the Viele building for more than 40 years. "The whole thing was pretty silly."

But Tibbetts can't figure out why it has taken so long for the School Board to come to its senses about building downtown.

"We tried to tell them for four years that it wasn't the thing to do," she said. "We told them that it would cost the taxpayers too much."